My father may be gone, but ‘our’ radio is still going
latimes.com
latimes.com
I then give it back to the seller who usually is excited about having it work again. Once in a while I will put the stories on eham.net.
If for any reason the radio breaks, going to send the author an email to offer to fix it for free. All it takes are about $3 worth of mouser capacitors in my experience.
Selfishly I do it to keep up my soldering skills when none of my amateur radio related radios need servicing. Plus putting a little good karma out there never hurt anyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code
edit: I may be overstating that the token is precisely a prosign.
But if so it will be one of the closely related early electrical communication codes.
Bought it from a person who lived about 20 miles away. He grew up with it in his grandmas house. Bought it, fixed it and returned it back to him.
Fixing it is non-issue. Almost evey part will be available if not a direct replacement then a close substitute. Even new electrolytic capacitors can be made to look like old parts by burying them in the case of the defunct part.
As for tubes, it's almost certain they'll be standard octals (they were commonplace by 1941), and there's any number of them around both new-old stock and secondhand.
Though personally, if I had the deep emotional connection with it, I'd want to fix it myself (almost certainly with assistance from some amateurs who know the radio).
I've switched them on expecting fireworks—the plates in the 5Y3G/T or 80 rectifiers glowing red hot because the electrolytic caps had shorted to deck—but no they actually still worked.
What's more I've even had some of those ancient wet electrolytic caps (the 1930s-style 8μF/400V types in vertical cans mounted on the chassis) actually work.
Mind you, I certainly don't recommend you do that—do as I say not as I do (I'm rather gung ho about such matters and rather enjoy the fireworks). Be warned, you can not only blow up the rectifiers but also the power transformer and that'll likely be much harder to replace than the tubes.
I recall several years back being so shocked that some of those old wet electros still worked that I pulled the top seals off several and stuck my multimeter in the electrolyte and noticed that essentially there was no voltage between the electrolyte and the case. I even stuck my finger on the Al foil and could feel very little until I pushed hard and then suddenly whammo—ouch. A fascinating exercise, it's an excellent illustration of how good aluminum oxide is as an insulator and dielectric.
Please don't try this unless you are as mad as I am—and even then don't do it!
My car dies in a month if I don’t start it because of parasitic drain.
My 1969 deuce and a half fired up after two years with zero problem at all.
I have ancient computers that work fine and much much newer ones dead by capacitor.
Franky, I'm pissed off with much modern elecronics (I used to work in the prototype lab for a large multinational electronics company and crappy design like that wouldn't get past the breadboard stage let alone make it into production).
However, it can also pass quickly! I have mentored a few of these people over the years. It is funny!
I worry about burning up a chip, and they worry about getting zapped!
We share experiences, fix or build a few things and it all works out fine.
Edit: I feel that way about my Apple Platinum 8 bit computer. It was the machine I started on, and I learned a ton! Great little computer. And of course, it can be fixed!
But, I flip that switch, hear that 1Khz beep and do not look forward to the day coming when I do have to fix it.
I find that it's impossible for the average listener to identify the difference in recorded music, especially if there's a lot of distortion in play, but I can entertain the idea that it's a detectable difference.
As someone who moved from solid-state and digital amps to tube amps I find there to be a huge difference in terms of dynamics and response, which massively influences the way I and others play. I can't imagine Jeff Beck or Gary Moore getting the same results with non-tube amps, since their playing relies so much on dynamics and physically feeling and moving air in the room.
edit: for live touring, though, it's so much more efficient to use digital or solid-state options for size, weight and reliability, if it doesn't directly impact the artist's ability to perform
Yeah, I would expect modern software able to do the job for all but extreme cases. Basically, custom Amp mods.
Dimebag Darrell and Buckethead are two names who come to mind, favouring the even response of solid state over the more-dynamic valve amps. If we include pre-amplification such as guitar pedals, solid state is everywhere - a DS1 or a Rat gives that even response for big gnarly cold distortions. Then there's the Boss HM pedal which spawned a whole genre of it's own when players used it as a pre-amp for that unique "chainsaw" sound.
So, you're right that most players opt for valves at the amplification stage, but solid state is all over guitar music.
There is still (!) plenty of old stock of radio and television tubes out there, however.
There are. I had the resident guitar expert at work pick me out a cheap-but-decent guitar+amp combo for my son, and the amp ended up being a 1-watt tube amp
Reckon the demand wouldn't warrant tooling up (and they're messy complex tubes to make).
I believe there are even a company or two manufacturing new.
Even in Russia, it's mostly a cottage industry, they aren't shipping thousand's monthly and definitely are not funding a war machine from that small investment, it also costs them raw resources when they do eventually manufacture. War has a way of getting funding much greater than from it's exports.
I reckon he was mad to attempt it but I have to eat humble pie because he became so expert at it. And what's more, he did all this in his backyard shed at home!
Note that many of those things are a hot-chassis design. The chassis is directly connected to one side of the power line, so there is a shock hazard. On some units, the shafts of the controls are live.[2]
Right, hot-chassis was mainly a US phenomenon due to its 110/115V supply. It was very rare in other countries such as in Europe, UK, NZ and Australia that used 220/240V because of the danger. If memory serves me correctly, I think hot-chassis was banned in some countries such as Australia. Of the 220/240V countries some European ones did permit H-C but such sets were rare.
I think seeing that they are made of glass, people assume vacuum tubes are delicate in some way. They are not really, this person should use their radio. Tube radios are much easier to fix in general than a transistor radio.
> How does one go about finding ancient tubes nowadays?
The internet! Or if you want the manual touch, a radio rally. Many tubes are still in production albeit sometimes in tricky parts of the world!
> Where are the parents with the know-how to fix such things anymore?
Also the internet! There are several people who could fix the radio on this thread!
I've been in a lot of ham labs; they are everywhere but super cool.
To me, it'd be like someone saying: "Oh, you're curious and like to look at the stars? How droll!"
Alas, the reason he stopped me (which he never mentioned of course) was that I looked very close to the description of someone who had just robbed a bank in my home town.
By the time I got to my parents house, everyone in town had "heard" I had been arrested for bank robbery thanks to a few folks with police scanners.
Much of the activity I have heard on scanners is mundane: running plates, responding to alarms, ambulance calls, noise complaints, accidents blocking traffic, minor disputes where one side feels compelled to summon the police.
There are the tragedies. Lots of medical calls where someone is unresponsive, which could be anything from an OD to a heart attack. "Domestic calls," usually fights between spouses or parents and adult children. Mental health emergencies. Seniors wandering the street, who have forgotten where they live.
Then there are the serious emergencies: fires, armed robberies, once a car chase. When I first got started decades ago there was a Boston police channel that a gang unit sometimes used but since then they appear to have migrated to a non-public frequency. I frequently hear police now asking specific colleagues to call them, I assume because the info shouldn't be shared over the regular dispatch frequency or would take too long to explain and tie up the channel.
I remember having an 800MHz scanner in the 80's when cellular was born, and listening to some unbelievably banal and dull conversations. I learned 80% of cell phone calling is "what's for dinner?" conversations.
Recently I started keeping a radio switched on in the kitchen all day, and the family seems to like it. I thought there might be complaints, probably from my teenagers, but I switch it to the pop charts stations a few days a week. And the kids are even OK with 80s stations and tunes they remember from the memes of yesteryear!
There are some interesting hidden advantages to having that thing on all day. For example, during emergencies like extended power outages, it's a very easy and reassuring way to get updates.
But it all started when I grew up listening to Dad dialing in his favorite station, KIXI-AM in Seattle, every morning at his office.
Got to work with a headache and too many projects to finish? Well, how long can you focus on those temporary annoyances while the dulcet tones of _Love Story_ play? (Andy Williams, not Taylor Swift)
(BTW if you like that idea, tune into Hayama Beach FM Japan streaming for the next couple of hours and thank me later...)
Hopefully my own kids don't feel too much pressure to check propagation on the bands with a handheld wideband receiver like Dad does on vacation at the beach, but I'm glad they get to experience what a good radio can do.
For the younger (7-10 year old) kids who came to our table, we actually didn't do anything terribly technical - we just asked them, "What's your favorite type of music?", showed them how to tune to an appropriate local FM station, and let them see the waterfall plot of the station, put the big headphones on, and that sort of thing. If any of them showed an interest, I'd hand them a hand-held CB radio, one of the big clunky 80s ones from Stranger Things, and let them make "their own radio station", then showed them how to pick it up like the FM station. We got a lot of younger visitors this way!
Part two of course is location: I'd expect CB to be more prominent on big cross-country highways; GMRS in wide-open country where folks might be overlanding. If you're hanging out in a city and expecting to hear either, I think you're liable to be disappointed.
It has a long wavelength. 11 meters, and that means it will propagate like "Short Wave" and HF (high frequency) commercial broadcasts tend to do.
The line of sight signals happen at much higher frequencies. VHF and higher. (GHZ)
They are all using SSB though I think. Not super common in handhelds.
He passed in 2016, and now the radio plays away situated on a workbench in my brothers garage. It gets turned up when someone is actually working out there, but only turned down and not off when they retire to the house.
As I recall this, I remember it wasn't even just the most recent model. Repairing radios wasn't his thing so eventually they'd get replaced when broken, but I can recall at least two distinct radios over the years so I really think he'd been doing that for quite many years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Eternal_Flam...
It does not work very well in my garage, but nothing does.
http://www.xtalman.com/ --- Borden Radio Company sells kits to make all kinds of old radios, including tube radios.
https://vacuumtubes.net/ --- "Welcome to the Vacuum Tubes division of Radio Electric Supply, home of the largest supply of New Old Stock vacuum tubes in the world."
This is not progress. :-(
People hack, modify, whatever it takes to make it work.
We basically keep instances of damn near anything.
Which it were easier. It should be.
This person should consider replacing the capacitors in the radio, or having someone do it.
The old, bad wax capacitors will quickly burn out the tubes. The tubes themselves are quite reliable.
If they do that, it could last decades more easily.
The main way transformers are ruined is bad caps. Otherwise they'll last forever. Wax capacitors from back in the day are hot garbage.
Also, these things can and should be updated to correctly ground the chassis, add fuse(s) and have a polarized power cord with sane insulation, as opposed to cloth.
Lol, cotton wire insulation. Old circuits are sometimes laughable to look at.
Look up "Shango" on YT as an entry into a community of people able to fix vintage electronics.
Apparently, my search history is helping this discussion more than expected.